The first Linux PDA which I bought as a new was the Nokia 770. If was
(and still is - I still have it) a cool device but it was the first of
the line and it was a rather experimental one. This it was underpowered
and it have several design flaws. It has weak touchscreen surface (a
plastic one which was prone to scratches), it was too weak CPU (an ARM
@224 MHz) and just 64 MB of RAM. It also has somewhat small internal
storage a slot for not so common miniSD cards (2GB card at maximum).
The stylus was an elegant thin one but it was uncomfortable to use. But
the biggest problem was old and limited WiFi chipset which didn't
supported some common encryptions even when the device was released.
Yes, the device have had a gorgeous 800x480 display which was excellent
for web browsing (a task for what was the 770 designed) but the slow
CPU and limited RAM made browsing experience not as good as one might
expected. Well, it the device was able to connect to a WiFi network at
all.
Also the software was somewhat limited: it was originally shipped just
with a browser (the Opera if I'm not mistaken), an e-mail client and
something for instant messaging. There was also a terminal, a simple
calculator and a couple of games. No PIM and no office stuff at all.
Fortunately it was improved by the community in relatively short time.
There appeared a GPE (Gnu Palmtop Environment) port qute mature tools
(a calendar, a to do list and so on), an AbiWord port (well, that thing
is always unreliable but it allowed me to write several long documents
on the device), the Gnumeric and much more. I even sold my Palm Vx
because the 770 was able to replace it completely (plus it was able to
replace my notebook in many situations). I was even able to compile the
OpenGL libraries here and to run some of my software on the device (but
they ran with many limitations, of course).
But it was still slow... So after 2 years I got a secondhand Nokia
N800. It was an improved device (excellent glass-covered screen, 128 MB
of RAM, a much faster CPU and 2 - TWO - full-sized SD slots). It has
also the radio receiver and a 640x480 camera (very low quality one,
unfortunately - it was meant for videoconferencing). I used the device
for several years but later I got the N810 (with a screen readable on a
full sunlight and with the build-in GPS) and even later I sold both
N800 and N810 and replaced them with a OpenMoko phone and the Ben
NanoNote micronotebook. After that I used several different handheld
platforms and at the end I have returned to the Palm for daily use. But
I decided to got a cheap N810. Unfortunately, it died.
So before few weeks I found a cheap N800 on the eBay. It arrived this
Monday so now I'm playing with it. Of course it is abandoned for ages.
The Maemo.org has the latest update for the N800 from 2014. Nokia
software repositories are of course gone. So a lot of software is no
longer available. But many of other repositories are still alive.
So a lot of stuff can be used and the most of functions of the device
are still accessible. There is a radio application (thus a third-party
one), a program for taking of pictures, several WWW browsers (all are
horribly outdated, of course), the whole GPE suite (though I'm not
brave enough to try synchronisation with the Google calendar). The Vim
7.x is still available and both the Gnumeric and the AbiWord are here,
too. There is also something called TCC (Tiny C Compiler) so one might
be able to compile some C programs here. There is also the DOSbox
available of one needs to run some DOS-based software.
In the past it was possible to use and external USB-VGA card. It was
useful for presentations (it was slow to show a live desktop but fast
enough to show static images - so one has to convert a PPT/PDF
presentation to a set of PNG images). The software is still available
and I still have the necessary hardware (a USB-VGA adapter and the
cables) so I'm going to try it. It does not sound like a big deal today
but in 2008-2009 there have been just several pocket devices which were
able to do something similar.
There are some games (the Doom and the DopeWars are both available, and
much more) and of course there are many multimedia applications (but
I'm not sure if their on-line functions will work today). And, I forgot
about the MaemoMapper - the OpenStreetMaps still can be downloaded and
used!
After all, I'm feeling to be 10 year younger with this device. Most of
things are working (for me) as they worked in 2009, the battery is
still as weak as it was in 2009 (well, I have got a new one for mu 770
before some time) - the device can survive 3-4 hours on a WiFi and it
can probably stay for a whole week in standby mode (these Nokias were
always very good in standby battery live).
At the moment I have loaded all software that I wish to have on the
device (no office application if I don't count the Vim) and put two
low-end 32 GB SanDisk cards inside. I will use them for music and for
e-books (I'm not sure if the old FBReader can read ePUB files so I'll
have to try it). It might be a nice travel companion, I think.